AAPG N.E.T.

Recent Posts

In January several long-awaited actions are likely: The Nebraska Supreme Court should rule on a suit challenging the right of the governor to approve the pipeline route; President Obama may decide whether to issue a presidential permit; and the House and Senate plan votes on legislation to approve the pipeline without a presidential permit.

When referring to the early Russian oil industry, one almost always hears the names of the fields located in the southern Absheron Peninsula, in Azerbaijan. Rarely does one hear about the oil heritage of the northern Russian lands close to the basin of the Izhma-Pechora River.

Demand for all forms of energy, including oil and natural gas, will grow significantly in the next 26 years – but political and regulatory uncertainties create risks that may constrain the private-sector investments needed to meet the demand. That’s the message found in several recent analyses of the global energy market, which could shed light on patterns of energy growth and issues constraining industry’s ability to meet the growing demands.

No sooner had the ink dried on my last column about the winds of change buffeting our industry when we saw oil prices slide from $75 a barrel to $55. I didn’t foresee these winds arriving at gale force, but that’s what’s happened.

The call for abstracts deadline is Jan. 15 for the next AAPG International Conference and Exhibition – a meeting that will be historic on many levels. This year’s ICE will be held Sept. 13-16 in Melbourne, Australia – the first time AAPG has used that city as a setting for ICE.

According to Juan Carlos Soldo, who just recently led the successful IX Hydrocarbon Exploration and Development Congress in Mendoza, Argentina, “Unconventionals really aren't so unconventional anymore.”

Innumerable geoscientists worldwide are familiar with the AAPG Giant Oil Fields publications. These AAPG members are spearheading the effort to compile “Giant Oil and Gas Fields of the Decade 2000-2010” featuring papers covering fields in areas around the globe.

Oil should be a blessing. It creates jobs and puts food on the table for millions of people. It fuels the power that drives industrial growth and development to move countries beyond oil and gas into a sustainable future. That is how the first female president of NAPE views the hydrocarbons she has been working to discover since beginning her career 24 years ago.

In-Person Training

Join the discussion with leading operators in Latin America and Africa. Gain greater understanding of geological and geophysical attributes of stratigraphic traps in deep water settings. Learn more from equatorial margin exploration analogues.

The Midland Playmaker Forum is focused on new and emerging plays of interest to sections or regions, with a broad global appeal to explorers in all locations. Its emphasis is the process of turning a prospect into a discovery and therefore complements the existing prospect expos.

The aim of the workshop is to provide an initial overview of CBM opportunities in the Asia Pacific and to share and examine recent technological advancements in geological understanding and in key engineering practices which are emerging from around the region.

The technology that made new plays possible can now be used in many different ways to cut costs and increase recoverable reserves, all at very affordable costs per barrel, especially if the infrastructure is already in place.

Join leading experts to learn about important new developments for developing rigorous, consistent and statistically valid reserve estimations. It has been 5 years since the SEC published “Modernization of Oil and Gas Reporting” which gave companies more flexibility and options for reserve and resource estimation

The London Playmaker Forum is focused on new and emerging plays of interest to sections or regions, with a broad global appeal to explorers in all locations. Its emphasis is the process of turning a prospect into a discovery and therefore complements the existing prospect expos.

Connectivity in deepwater deposited reservoirs is often times something you don’t know for certainty until you have a well down and flowing. This course is for engineers, geologists and geophysicists who are responsible for economically positive exploration and development of deep-marine reservoirs. It is particularly appropriate for geologist-engineer teams who are responsible for building reservoir development models in these complex systems.

The course starts with patterns of carbonate deposition and moves on to an examination of modern analogs for ancient sediments, diagenesis, and select case histories of Paleozoic and Mesozoic basin reservoirs.

Geoscientists, petrophysicists, engineers, and managers who are seeking to improve their effectiveness in exploring, appraising, and developing shale reservoirs will learn critical geoscience and engineering aspects to help quantify uncertainty to help book more reserves.

Here is an introduction to the tools and techniques that geologists and geophysicists use to locate gas and oil, that drillers use to drill the wells and that petroleum engineers use to test and complete the wells and produce the gas and oil. Exercises throughout the course provide practical experience in well log correlation, contouring, interpretation of surface and subsurface, contoured maps, seismic interpretation, well log interpretation, and decline curve analysis.

The goal of seismic amplitude interpretation and this course is the validation of reservoir composition. Upon course completion, participants should be able to select the appropriate techniques for pore-fluid and lithology prediction from seismic data.

A succession of exercises and complementary
lectures will expose the participants to deep-water depositional systems, facies analysis, chronostratigraphic framework, comparison of local to global depositional patterns, and application of an integrated approach to stratigraphic analyses using multiple data sets.

The course is a practical and applied introduction to geochemical techniques routinely employed in shale-gas/condensate and tight-oil reservoir assessment. Class emphasis is on explaining which tools and techniques can best address specific questions and how to interpret conflicting data from different analyses.

Much of today’s resource play drilling activity focuses on evaluating properties and holding acreage. As resource plays mature, we will want to identify bypassed pay and evaluate the benefits of restimulation. Even with access to such modern data, geology, and hence seismic data and seismic attributes are only one of the components necessary to predict EUR.

This short course is designed to provide information to facilitate exploration for microbial carbonate buildups and associated reservoir facies and to assist with the formulation of development plans for fields producing from microbial carbonates. The course consists of a series of seven lectures supplemented by core samples.

Permanent Reservoir Monitoring, also known as Life-of-Field Seismic, using permanently installed seismic cables, has been characterized by a few key marker projects but did not reach mainstream status during its first ten years. However, since the start of its second decade we have witnessed a flurry of new projects and activity so far, both in the Americas (Brazil) and Europe (Norway). Within a time span of about three years, these efforts combined are already dwarfing the efforts of the first 10 years.

This three-day workshop will be dedicated to sharing knowledge, ideas, and workflows pertaining to exploration for stratigraphically trapped hydrocarbon accumulations in the Middle East. The workshop will emphasize case studies involving both carbonates and clastics — in order to help focus explorationists in their search for these types of traps.

Here is an introduction to the tools and techniques that geologists and geophysicists use to locate gas and oil, that drillers use to drill the wells and that petroleum engineers use to test and complete the wells and produce the gas and oil. Exercises throughout the course provide practical experience in well log correlation, contouring, interpretation of surface and subsurface, contoured maps, seismic interpretation, well log interpretation, and decline curve analysis.

This course assumes no logging knowledge and seeks to establish an understanding of basic petrophysical measurements and interpretation techniques which can be applied to routine tasks, and upon which more complex and advanced information and interpretive techniques can be built. It strives to provide a strong and coherent foundation for the understanding of other, specialized interpretation techniques involving well log data.

Make plans to attend an AAPG Geosciences Technology Workshop (GTW) to be held in Wellington between 21-23 April, 2015. The workshop will comprise four half-day sessions focused on broad depositional environment settings. The aim is to better understand modern depositional systems, and how they can help us to better interpret ancient petroleum reservoirs.

The overall goal of this course is to provide tools for efficient and effective re-exploration and development. It uses a two-part approach. First it uses petrophysical analysis to understand all that can be derived from examination of standard open-hole logs. This is followed by integrated approaches to discover key factors controlling oil and gas distribution in carbonate reservoirs in the greater Midcontinent USA. Methodologies and workflows reviewed include geosteering and evaluation of horizontal wells and optimizing carbon storage utilization and management.

This field seminar offers an excellent opportunity for the students to walk on a variety of modern terrigenous clastic depositional systems while observing sedimentary processes, modern sedimentary structures, and numerous trenches illuminating the three-dimensional architecture of each area.

For those who have not visited the region previously (or have not had the chance to tour it in depth), this field seminar will provide a comprehensive journey into the geological story of this fascinating landscape.

The goals of this four-day field workshop are to provide participants with a robust exposure to the range of topics required to understand, characterize and predict the mechanical response of reservoir rocks to deformation from either geologic or reservoir stimulation and management processes. The workshop interweaves fundamental background material from lecture, first-hand field observations, and interactive group exercises to yield a robust and engaging technical discussion.

The field trip will visit sites where evidence of this volcanic history can be examined as well as the petrified forest and new visitor center and paleontology lab at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.

This two-day field trip will review the geologic history in context with the past and present petroleum exploration in the North Park-Middle Park Basin (or Colorado Headwaters Basin, CHB) in Northcentral Colorado.

This course is an introduction to the Bakken/Three Forks resource play. The play has proven to be economic and successful for many operators. A wide range of topics will be covered to familiarize the participant with the important nuances of the Bakken and Three Forks.

This course is intended for industry professionals who desire a firm foundation in carbonate rocks. Most sedimentology and stratigraphy courses focus on siliciclastic rocks while giving only cursory treatments of carbonates. With carbonate reservoirs containing approximately half of the world’s oil and gas, a better understanding of these complex rocks is highly desirable. Participants should have some background in sedimentology and stratigraphy.

This course is designed to teach graduate students the principles, concepts and methods of sequence stratigraphy. Sequence stratigraphy is an informal chronostratigraphic methodology that uses stratal surfaces to subdivide the stratigraphic record. This methodology allows the identification of coeval facies, documents the time-transgressive nature of classic lithostratigraphic units and provides geoscientists with an additional way to analyze and subdivide the stratigraphic record.

This course provides an overview of the petroleum industry and upstream economics, beginning with the geoscientist’s role of evaluating uncertainty in E&P, estimating prospect resources, and estimating chances of success. The course then moves on to field development scenarios and cash flow models, developing various capital budgeting economic indices to evaluate and rank various prospective field projects, production and reservoir management for producing fields and international contract arrangements and emerging trends.

Black Belt Ethics examines the various tenants that define the martial artist’s code of honor. The course reviews each of these tenants and discusses how they can be applied in our personal and professional lives.

This one-half day course will review core lithofacies of the Bakken Petroleum System in North Dakota and the Exshaw Petroleum System in the southern Alberta Basin with an emphasis on the Pronghorn Member of the Lower Bakken Shale and the underlying Three Forks Formation

This course will address integration of source rock, produced oil and gas, and mud gas data to better understand and exploit 3-dimensional details of petroleum systems. Carbon isotope and oil biomarker geochemistry will be stressed as a way to determine quantity and type of generated hydrocarbons and migration distance and direction within source rock and tight oil plays.

This course is designed to enhance interpretation skill sets with regard to geologic interpretation of seismic data. The overall objective is to present methods for reducing risk with regard to prediction of lithology, reservoir compartmentalization and stratigraphic trapping potential in exploration and production.

This course is designed for geologists who wish to interpret and explore lacustrine microbialites and associated carbonate facies for hydrocarbons, or just want to familiarize themselves with microbialites and lacustrine systems.

This two-day trip will visit outcropping reservoir rocks and structures that typify the framework of the prolific Rocky Mountains petroleum province. The drive from Denver to Casper and return will transect numerous basement uplifts and foreland basins.

This four-day field trip will begin with a drive from Denver to Glenwood Springs and a road log describing the general geology along Interstate 70 (I-70), as well as an overview stop in Rifle to introduce the Wasatch and Green River systems. It will focus on two themes: observing the characteristics of a wide variety of sedimentary environments and comparing these with subsurface data.

This one-day field trip will apply new crustal-scale seismic experiments and structural balancing in the Northern Rockies to the 3D Laramide geometry and natural fractures of the Denver Basin and its resource plays. We will also examine the resulting syn-and post-Laramide fracture systems that provide critical fluid conduits for successful resource plays, like the Niobrara play of the Eastern Rockies.

This three-day field trip will examine examples of tight-oil reservoirs (Cretaceous Niobrara Formation, Codell member of Carlile Formation from the Denver and North Park basins), tight-gas reservoirs (Cretaceous J Sandstone, Codell and Williams Fork Sandstone, from both the Denver and Piceance basins), CBM reservoirs (Cretaceous Cameo Coals from the Piceance Basin) and potential oil shale resources (Green River Formation of the Piceance Basin).

This one-day course will review state-of-the-art techniques for characterizing mudrock reservoirs at the pore scale. Shale/mudrock structure and pore systems will be emphasized. It will conclude with applications of shale reservoir characterization using pore-scale imaging.

This trip will focus on defining the Niobrara formation from the outcrop scale to the well bore, and discuss the key parameters that have made this play work, both from a geologic and a reservoir standpoint. Furthermore, we will describe how Noble Energy has helped to lead the industry in Northern Colorado to safely, responsibly and efficiently develop this huge resource. We will visit both Niobrara outcrops and Noble Energy production facilities to illustrate our current subsurface understanding and best practices.

This one-day field trip will take a quantitative view of the accumulation of sediment in the Denver Basin since the middle Cretaceous. We will systematically review the facies, thickness, organic content, rates of accumulation and paleoenvironments of the rocks that comprise the last 100 million years of deposition in the region.

This course will focus on Cretaceous sandstones in the Powder River and D-J Basins, including the Turner, Codell, Shannon, Sussex, and Parkman Sandstones. Cores from both the USGS and company collections will be presented.

This course will focus on practical techniques to investigate and optimize fracture treatments. Participants in this course will have access to more than 200 published field studies in which the productivity and profitability of fields have been improved by altering the treatment design.

This six-day field seminar is designed to provide participants with an appreciation of the broad range of deep-water reservoir facies, the mechanisms by which they were deposited, their predictive attributes, their reservoir heterogeneity and their stratigraphic architecture.

The field seminar develops and evaluates the sequence stratigraphic framework and controls on location and reservoir character of Upper Miocene-Pliocene carbonate sequences from a variety of carbonate systems within the context of the regional paleogeography.

The attendee will gain a working knowledge concerning how faults and fractures develop and their terminology, methodologies utilized in collecting and analyzing fracture data, characteristics of faults and fractures that affect the sedimentary units (including black shales) in the northern Appalachian Basin of New York state, and tectonics that led to the formation of the structures in the northern Appalachian Basin and the adjacent Appalachian Orogen.

Here is an introduction to the tools and techniques that geologists and geophysicists use to locate gas and oil, that drillers use to drill the wells and that petroleum engineers use to test and complete the wells and produce the gas and oil. Exercises throughout the course provide practical experience in well log correlation, contouring, interpretation of surface and subsurface, contoured maps, seismic interpretation, well log interpretation, and decline curve analysis.

This field seminar will give participants an overview about the geology, reservoir engineering and operation aspects of the Lodgepole-Bakken-Three Forks Petroleum System. Excellent outcrops illustrate how facies, reservoir properties and rock strength can vary along a lateral well bore. Engineers, geologists and operators will find this especially interesting.

The seminar will utilize traverses to examine multiple thrust sheets exposed in Sun River Canyon, the famous Teton Anticline, and an outstanding example of an exposed fractured reservoir along a fault‐propagated fold in Mississippian carbonates as Swift Reservoir. Participants will examine the mechanics of fracturing, folding, and faulting in thrust belt terrains, identify and discuss new ideas regarding the geometry and kinematics of the development of thrust belts, compare seismic interpretation with outcrop examples, and analyze stratigraphic concepts which are essential in the exploration of thrust belt targets.

This course assumes no logging knowledge and seeks to establish an understanding of basic petrophysical measurements and interpretation techniques which can be applied to routine tasks, and upon which more complex and advanced information and interpretive techniques can be built. It strives to provide a strong and coherent foundation for the understanding of other, specialized interpretation techniques involving well log data.

This course is oriented towards the recognition and characterization of uncertainty in unconventional reservoirs. Starting with resource/reservoir assessment methods, it moves through the full unconventional value-chain. This two-day exercise and example filled workshop provides participants with the techniques and reasoning needed to validly assess the merits of the search for, and development of, unconventional resource plays.

Geomechanics – in both completions and drilling operations – has become a critical technology in the development of Unconventional Plays. This course presents the basics of oil field geomechanics and its application to unconventional developments; specifically, the role of stress, pore pressure, mechanical properties, and natural fractures on hydraulic fracturing operations.

This structural field course in the Front Ranges of the Canadian Rockies focuses on relating outcrop to seismic expressions of compressive structural styles that are common in fold-and-thrust belts and deepwater passive margins (toe thrust belts) worldwide. Participants will recognize common types of structures in fold-and-thrust belts, apply fault-related folding concepts to interpret these structures, identify petroleum traps and their major structural risk elements, and recognize similarities between styles of trap and reservoir-scale deformation.

The course is a practical and applied introduction to geochemical techniques routinely employed in shale-gas condensate and tight-oil reservoir assessment with an emphasis on tools and techniques. Participants should have a solid background in petroleum geology.

Here is an introduction to the tools and techniques that geologists and geophysicists use to locate gas and oil, that drillers use to drill the wells and that petroleum engineers use to test and complete the wells and produce the gas and oil. Exercises throughout the course provide practical experience in well log correlation, contouring, interpretation of surface and subsurface, contoured maps, seismic interpretation, well log interpretation, and decline curve analysis.

Take advantage of this unique opportunity to learn all the aspects related to the understanding and modeling of fractured reservoirs. Attendees will take geologic concepts and use them in reservoir modeling through hands-on sessions devoted to the examination of outcrop, core and log data. They will use that information and a software to create 3D fractured reservoir models. Using actual Teapot Dome (Wyoming, USA) field data from the Tensleep and Niobrara Shale formations and a hands-on approach, the workshop allows the geoscientist to identify fractures and to construct predictive 3D fracture models that can be used to identify productive zones, plan wells and to create fracture porosity and permeability models for reservoir simulation.

The Hay River region in the Northwest Territories is one of the best locations in North America for the examination of Devonian carbonates, and the Pine Point mine site is one of the best localities for viewing the fabrics and geometries associated with hydrothermal dolomitization.

This field seminar offers an excellent opportunity for the students to walk on a variety of modern terrigenous clastic depositional systems while observing sedimentary processes, modern sedimentary structures, and numerous trenches illuminating the three-dimensional architecture of each area.

This course is a non-numerical introduction to the use of geochemistry and BPSM to better understanding unconventional resources. This course is designed to provide participants with new information on unconventional and sweet spot identification that is not normally available in routine service company courses.

Participants will learn a specific and comprehensive methodology for finding and developing conventional and unconventional oil and gas resources associated with lake deposits. The seminar will start with the Quaternary Bonneville basin in Utah, to build familiarity with lacustrine depositional processes. Participants then examine world-famous exposures of organic-rich mudstone, fluvial sandstone, and carbonate microbialite facies in Wyoming.

Participants will learn through the use of spectacular outcrops, subsurface datasets, and stratigraphic modeling how these systems tracts and key surfaces (flooding surfaces and sequence boundaries) may be recognized.

The main part of the field seminar will focus on the description of the fractured carbonates and the extrapolation from the outcrop observations to the subsurface for building geologically plausible reservoir models.

This workshop is the outgrowth of continued cooperation between AAPG & EAGE to develop a series of multi-disciplined gatherings dedicated to understanding, completing & producing tight sandstone & carbonate reservoirs.

Here is an introduction to the tools and techniques that geologists and geophysicists use to locate gas and oil, that drillers use to drill the wells and that petroleum engineers use to test and complete the wells and produce the gas and oil. Exercises throughout the course provide practical experience in well log correlation, contouring, interpretation of surface and subsurface, contoured maps, seismic interpretation, well log interpretation, and decline curve analysis.

Here is an introduction to the tools and techniques that geologists and geophysicists use to locate gas and oil, that drillers use to drill the wells and that petroleum engineers use to test and complete the wells and produce the gas and oil. Exercises throughout the course provide practical experience in well log correlation, contouring, interpretation of surface and subsurface, contoured maps, seismic interpretation, well log interpretation, and decline curve analysis.

This course is designed to give participants the basic working tools to explore and develop hydrocarbons in salt basins. Because no two basins are alike, the focus is on understanding the processes and styles of salt-related deformation. At course completion participants should be able to under the depositional setting of layered evaporites, describe the mechanics of salt flow, interpret salt and stratal geometries associated with diapirs, salt welds, and minibasins, and assess more accurately the risks in the exploration of salt basins.

Online Training

Cross disciplinary workflows play an important part of successful characterization of shale reservoirs. This course discusses how the artificial kerogen maturity of organic-rich Green River shale affects the petrophysical, micro-structural, geochemical and elastic properties.

The goal of this e-symposium is to review the status of the Mexican upstream sector, and to provide a review of the most prolific and prospective areas in Mexico, with a focus on opportunities for international participation, given the upcoming energy reform in Mexico.

This course is ideal for individuals involved in Midland Basin exploration and development. Successful development of Wolfcamp shale oil relies on complex inter-relationships (ultimately interdependencies) within and between a wide variety of scientific disciplines, financial entities, and company partnerships.

Water cut is a big factor in gauging the success of horizontal drilling in the Mississippi Lime Play (MLP). The contributing factors are related in part to the spectrum of producing lithofacies and reservoir quality encountered that varies laterally and vertically, sometimes dramatically.

The surprising emergence of several new exploration plays and new ideas on the basin history demonstrates that we have much more to learn and harvest from this natural laboratory of sedimentary processes.

This e-symposium will focus on how surface geochemical surveys and Downhole Geochemical Imaging technologies can be utilized jointly to directly characterize the composition of hydrocarbons vertically through the prospect section.

This e-symposium presents techniques for predicting pore pressure in seals by examining case studies from the Gulf of Mexico and incorporating the relationship between rocks, fluids, stress, and pressure.

Projects in several shales will be discussed, including Marcellus, Eagle Ford, Haynesville, Fayetteville, Montney, and Barnett, as will several seismically-detectable drivers for success including lithofacies, stress, pre-existing fractures, and pore pressure.

There are more approximately 1,000 oil and gas fields in the world that have been classified as "giant," containing more than 500 million barrels of recoverable oil and /or 3 trillion cubic feet of gas.

Recognition and Correlation of the Eagle Ford, Austin Formations in South Texas can be enhanced with High Resolution Biostratigraphy, fossil abundance peaks and Maximum Flooding Surfaces correlated to Upper Cretaceous sequence stratigraphic cycle chart after Gradstein, 2010.

This course will help you turn challenges into opportunities as you learn to strategically manage technological innovation, financial turmoil, a changing workforce, unpredictable social media, and tight deadlines.

Technical Writing Triage is a condensed course which identifies the key professional and technical writing in today’s workplace, discusses the most common problems/issues, and provides quick, easy-to-implement solutions for producing high-quality, effective communications.

This presentation will look at well placement vertically in the pay, well azimuth and well trajectory with explanations of how geology and post-depositional effects can make the difference between a successful well and a failure.

This e-symposium provides highlights of the hydraulic fracturing mechanics, analysis, and design, and is derived from a two and one-half (2-1/2) day course which is designed for drilling, completion, production engineers, engineering technicians, geologists, well-site and completion supervisors, and managers, who desire to possess a comprehensive and integral knowledge of Hydraulic Fracturing.

The presentation describes a well established fracture modeling workflow that uses a standard 3D seismic, conventional logs, image logs and data from one core to build predictive 3D fracture models that are validated with blind wells.

This 1-hour web-cast will arm the G&G asset team professionals with a core-competency understanding of these critical field realities, with direct reference to recent documented field experience and learnings